Squire Hembrow, from Weston Zoyland—wherever that may be—proposed the following little arithmetical puzzle, from which it is probable that several somewhat similar modern ones have...
When the Weaver brought out a square piece of beautiful cloth, daintily embroidered with lions and castles, as depicted in the illustration, the pilgrims disputed among themselves...
The silent and thoughtful Clerk of Oxenford, of whom it is recorded that "Every farthing that his friends e'er lent, In books and learning was it always spent," was prevailed upon...
Seated one night in the hall of the castle, Sir Hugh desired the company to fill their cups and listen while he told the tale of his adventure as a youth in rescuing from captivity...
The Insurance Act is a most prolific source of entertaining puzzles, particularly entertaining if you happen to be among the exempt. One's initiation into the gentle art of stamp-l...
Mrs. Covey, who keeps a little poultry farm in Surrey, is one of the most eccentric women I ever met. Her manner of doing business is always original, and sometimes quite weird and...
Chaucer says of the Squire's Yeoman, who formed one of his party of pilgrims, "A forester was he truly as I guess," and tells us that "His arrows drooped not with feathers low, And...
A man had a basket containing fifty potatoes. He proposed to his son, as a little recreation, that he should place these potatoes on the ground in a straight line. The distance bet...
This is the form in which I first introduced the question of magic squares with prime numbers. I will here warn the reader that there is a little trap. A fruit merchant had nine ba...
Seven friends, named Adams, Brooks, Cater, Dobson, Edwards, Fry, and Green, were spending fifteen days together at the seaside, and they had a round breakfast table at the hotel al...
As we have just discussed the construction of magic squares with prime numbers, the following forms an interesting companion problem. Make a magic square with nine consecutive comp...